The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. Thomas Huxley

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Tribes...

A village/tribe (direct descendants of the monkey clans - see 'Before the Dawn' - Nicolas Wade) may well be the default setting if we have to hit the factory reset button.
But consider the losses in this highly sustainable way of living:
•kiss goodbye to most present rights, including personal freedoms and gender equality. Tribes are ruled by The Big Man (note that gender) and if'n yer not in with The Man's crew, (like, wearing the wrong colour cap down Main Street) you'll shortly find yerself on a Ship of Fools (on a Good Day) or pegged out on the local beach at low tide (on a Bad Day).
•kiss goodbye to most scale enterprise: mining, metals, the shaping thereof etc. Enterprises and capitalism depend on the utmost trust between total strangers, and tribes/clans do not take kindly to strangers (that's part of their core definition..,.)
•kiss goodbye to cities and hence to the clustering and innovation thereby made possible: the various Renaissances that have taken place over the centuries have arisen from the cross-fertilisations of (quelle horreur!) Different Types Mingling: tribes don't take well to such uncontrolled goings-on.
The genius of the Anglosphere is that we invented portable, discretionary (choose your own) tribes via countless associations, enterprises, and ventures, after millenia of imposed tribes via blood, locality, religion etc. The Enlightenment did for all that.
Mind you, the re-tribalisation of the world has been long predicted, and Blut und Boden still has a visceral appeal to the revanchists amongst us....